Background

Like other consumables, our ReaLifeSim products satisfy a current and on-going need in a global market place. Current labor statics indicate the aging population of providers combined with the increased longevity of the world population creates a shortage of new providers. The need for competent healthcare providers at every level and in every location ensures the continued demand for this new interactive, integrated scale-able product line.

Clinical healthcare simulation is the current trend for training and assessing healthcare professionals using advanced technology. Basically, clinical simulation provides the experiential learning every medical and healthcare professional will need, but may not experience during real-life patient encounters. Virtual and mixed reality worlds are also powerful learning environments which can be used to engage learner’s multiple senses and facilitate complex, authentic and simulated experiences. But, there is no substitute for the actual practice and assessment of specific requisite skills in an authentic setting.

“U.S. nursing schools turned away 79,659 qualified applicants from baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs in 2012 due to insufficient number of faculty, clinical sites, classroom space, clinical preceptors, and budget constraints. The U.S. has been dealing with a nursing deficit of varying degrees for decades, but today—due to an aging population, the rising incidence of chronic disease, an aging nursing workforce, and the limited capacity of nursing schools—this shortage is on the cusp of becoming a crisis, one with worrying implications for patients and health-care providers alike.”

— Taken from the Internet 02.04.16: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/02/nursing-shortage/459741/

The lack of suitable, predictable, real-life settings to practice clinical competencies and the increased demand on healthcare providers from aging baby-boomers are all contributing to the need for more cost-effective, realistic simulated experiences. In response, institutions have been forced to rely on faceless, soul-less virtual computer scenarios and simulated experiences more than ever before, contributing to the potentially cataclysmic void in the critical human-to-human communication component of healthcare.

Make no mistake, these simulation education opportunities offer valuable learning experiences which can be scheduled and observed; unlike in real life where clinical learning opportunities may not present when a student is available. Industry has responded to the need for these technologies by manufacturing marvels of innovation and design. High fidelity manikins are blinking, winking, urinating, and so forth.

However, the various simulation technologies available on the domestic and international markets are typically very expensive. Maintaining a simulation program requires a significant amount of funding, as well as qualified educators and staff (both clinical and technical) to implement the use of these technologies in the appropriate space provided. All of these factors represent a huge investment in a program that is potentially unsustainable.

Current recommendations indicate up to 50% of clinical training can be accomplished in simulation acclivities. High fidelity simulation has and will continue to play an important role in simulation, but it cannot take the place of human interaction.

Simulated clinical experiences can be enhanced with the addition of effective interpersonal communication and competency outcomes tracking. Expanding the use of standardized patients provides healthcare students and clinicians the opportunity to interact with a real person, providing the most realistic simulation possible.

BGEI recognizes and claims by enhancing the realism of standardized patients with our cost effective wearable clinical simulation devices, healthcare students and clinicians can be provided the opportunity to interact with a human and receive realtime objective & subjective performance feedback contributing to the most realistic clinical simulation possible.